Bofors case: Supreme Court likely to hear plea today

The alleged corruption in the Bofors gun deal had created a scandal in the middle of Rajiv Gandhi's term as Prime Minister in 1987.

By

NewsX Bureau

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Updated

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1 September 2017,

3:11 PM

The case, filed by BJP leader and advocate Ajay Kumar, will be heard by a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra.

The Supreme Court will likely hear an appeal challenging Delhi High Court’s May 31, 2005 order discharging the Europe-based Hinduja brothers in the Bofors pay-off case on Friday.

The case, filed by BJP leader and advocate Ajay Kumar, will be heard by a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra.

In the last hearing in December 2016, the CBI had said that it was not given permission by the authorities a decade ago to appeal against the Delhi HC order discharging the Hinduja brothers — Srichand, Gopichand and Prakashchand.

The alleged corruption in the Bofors gun deal had created a scandal in the middle of Rajiv Gandhi’s term as Prime Minister in 1987 and had significantly contributed to the political discourse against his party, which lost the Lok Sabha elections in 1989.

The case was finally closed after a plea by the CBI on March 5, 2011, when a Delhi court ruled that the “hard-earned” tax-payers’ money could not be spent “on these type of proceedings which are not going to do any good to them”.

The main accused, Ottavio Quattrocchi, an Italian businessman, who had fled the country in the mid-1990s, died two years after the case was closed and charges against him were dropped. Quattrocchi was said to be close to the Gandhi family.

The case came up again before the Supreme Court in 2016 with the CBI informing it that the then UPA government led by the Congress had denied permission to it to appeal against the Delhi court order.